Healing of Lazarus persists as compelling iconography that conveys both medieval socio-religious constructs of illness and the potential for artistic imagery to propagate a misrepresentation of disease over millennia. Rather, they serve as spiritual engagement and moralistic assurance of salvation for earthly suffering and eternal damnation for the merciless. Thus, the parable and painting were not intended to reference or stigmatizing any one disease. Further confounding the clinical diagnosis is the object clasped in Lazarus’s right hand, the leper wooden clapper, both a warning to passers-by to maintain distance and a symbol of marginalization.Ĭloser study of the Old Testament and classic medical texts reveals that Lazarus’s lesions are most likely generic sores, abrasions, and skin breakdown. In fact, lazaretto, a fifteenth-century Venetian refuge for lepers, traces its name from lazzeri, or lepers. Though weeping skin lesions in medieval artistic convention and vernacular literature do not necessarily connote leprosy, historical inertia beatified Lazarus as the patron saint of lepers. Scholarship pre-dating the eleventh century diagnosed Lazarus with a myriad of conditions including paralysis, blindness, starvation, the plague, and most frequently, leprosy. Theologists and philosophical treatises have ascribed various interpretations to the parable of “The Rich Man and Lazarus” and in particular, the physical ailment of Lazarus. The landscape below has a characteristic tapestry-like quality, redolent of this highly prized fifteenth-century medium. The upper field is gilded in resplendent gold, a nod to Byzantine iconography. The pictorial space is visually divided by the recumbent Lazarus. Here, Lazarus is both the pitiful beggar and the heavenly infant, embodying spiritual rebirth and purity. Surrounding Lazarus and Abraham are ghostly figures of music-making angels who perform the hymns of heaven. After both men die, two devils drag the rich man into the flames of hell while the soul of Lazarus is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham, to join in the celestial banquet. The artist conflates multiple moments from the story in a single image. This small painting by a Westphalian master, made for private prayer, illustrates the canonized parable of Lazarus and Dives from the Gospel of Luke. He who conceals his disease cannot be healed.
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